Lamentations 5:7 - Exposition

We have borne their iniquities. The fathers died before the iniquity was fully ripe for punishment, and their descendants have the feeling that the accumulated sins of the nation are visited upon them. This view of national troubles is very clearly endorsed by one important class of passages ( Exodus 20:5 ; Exodus 34:7 ; Numbers 14:18 ; Jeremiah 32:18 ). The objection to it is forcibly expressed by Job ( Job 21:19 ), "God [it is said] layeth up his iniquity for his children: [but] let him requite it to himself, that he may feel it!" Hence Jeremiah ( Jeremiah 31:30 ) and Ezekiel ( Ezekiel 18:1 , etc.) insist on the truth that every man is punished for his own sins. Of course the two views of punishment are reconcilable. The Jews were not only punished, according to Jeremiah 16:11 , Jeremiah 16:12 , for their fathers' sins, but for their own still more flagrant offences.